Secretary of State

Indianapolis, IN - Today, Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita will join a small group of fellow election officials and legal scholars in Washington, D.C. for a daylong Voter Fraud-Voter Intimidation Working Group organized by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Rokita and representatives from the Department of Justice, the states of Georgia and Texas, civil rights groups, and the Republican and Democrat parties will aid the EAC in developing potential avenues for future research into voter fraud and intimidation.

An advocate of Indiana's Voter ID law designed to fight identity theft at the polls and absentee voting reform, Rokita was invited as the highest elected official in the group. Since taking office, Rokita has been summoned to Washington on multiple occasions to share Indiana's efforts in statewide election administration with fellow local and national officials. As both Indiana's Chief Election Officer and as a member of the Executive Board of the EAC's Standards Board, which advises the Commission on election administration issues, Rokita has been asked to share many of the state's election efforts with leaders in Congress to state legislators from around the country.

"I intend to not only share what we have learned from our successful implementation of Voter ID, but also Indiana's accomplishments in dealing with the absentee vote fraud we have seen in the state," Rokita said. "If vote fraud is happening in good places like Indiana where folks are ethical and hardworking, it's happening across the country. Indiana has much to offer this group in developing future ways to curb vote fraud and voter intimidation."

Charged by federal legislation to conduct research on election administration issues, the EAC is specifically required to develop nationwide statistics and methods of identifying, deterring, and investigating voting fraud and intimidation in elections for federal office. As a representative of Indiana's efforts to prevent election fraud, Rokita will take with him the success of running Indiana's first statewide election using the new Voter ID law and more strict absentee voting laws.